


Four Kicks

by laratoncita



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Character(s) of Color, Experimental Style, Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24835969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laratoncita/pseuds/laratoncita
Summary: Curly gets hauled in on a Saturday.
Kudos: 13





	Four Kicks

**Author's Note:**

> title from KOL <3 i was feeling inspired by ch2 of thermodynamic’s no strings attached (specifically re: policing) but im also a sucker for westerns so i hope my mccarthy influence is manageable :~)
> 
> additional warning for slurs which i think is covered under the "racism" tag but in case anyone's wondering yes i am mexican and i am. not reclaiming the slurs here but im def allowed to use them 🥴

You wake up overheated, fan in your room out and open window promising no wind. When you reach for your lamp it won’t turn on and your head hits the pillow not in disappointment but exhaustion. Perhaps when you wake up again in the morning the power will be back on but if it isn’t the food in the fridge will have gone bad no matter how little there is to begin with. You’ve been asleep all of two hours, you think, the sky barely lightening outside your window. You still feel the sluggishness the kiss of mota offers you and everything is sickly sweet like molasses and you fall back asleep with the taste of brown sugar on your teeth.

You wake up next to yelling, calm like you’ve never been in your life. It’s not until you hear Angie screaming that you finally sit up, a headache already settling at the nape of your neck and setting every nerve on fire. The stairs in this home are rickety from poor craft and there are three steps in a row that were built at different heights. Your mother forgets every time she hits the bottle and so often in the nights you can hear her smoke-stained voice cursing the wood the nails the very bones of this home.

Despite the creak of these same stairs you find yourself invisible when you first step into the kitchen, sleep still in your eyes and limbs and aching back. Angie is pink in the face like childhood again and your mother is yelling just as loudly back their words caught between the wire trap of English and Spanish that your mother calls pocho when you and Angela and Tim get to talking.

Angie at nearly fourteen and no sense of loyalty sees you and says, Curly comes in half-baked every goddamn night what d’you care about the length of my skirt? and your mother turns to you wild-eyed as all her children.

What time did you get home last night, she starts, and Angela tries to duck under her waving arms only to get caught in the snarl of your mother’s fingers—their bones cracked from rulers at a Catholic school down in Guadalajara their nailbeds dry as a river during plague. Angela jerks like a puppet and your mother says, Where do you think you’re going?, her Spanish crisp and clear and a world away from the radio stations with their trash-talk going a hundred miles and making you dizzy.

You don’t bother to stick around for the rest of that fight. No matter how early it is this house is never a home and after you are brushed washed greased again you are standing out back at the very end of your property where there are cars dumped by your buddies or Tim’s or sometimes merely folks who will pay your mother a couple bucks here and there to park their rusty models for days that turn to weeks. You look for a car whose owner you know won’t track you down for a beating if word gets to them about a hotwire and soon enough you’re on the road pleased as can be, half-awake perhaps but only just barely.

It’s just about noon and a Saturday to boot and though there are others out you don’t find any of the hoodlums you call kin and friends alike. There seems to be a fire under the hood of every car on the road and not even the kind that pull you into races and get your blood pumping like nothing else. You find yourself circling Centennial Park where a crowd has gathered and it’s here you find your brother.

What’s going on, you say once you’ve parked and come close enough and Tim turns to look at you with serious eyes. The scar over his face is no longer a surprise when you look at him, no matter that he got it while up in Big Mac during one of the rodeos and so couldn’t take care of it the way you know you’re supposed to when that big a wound is scratched across your skin.

Baby Curtis got into some trouble, looks like, he says, where were you last night, huh?

Shit, you say and look over Tim’s shoulder to see the sickly spread of blood across pavement a sea fit for a pharaoh. You imagine the youngest Curtis the reason for it and almost want to doubt except for how you remember that it was you who broke first when the two of you pressed cigarettes into your fingertips, The hell happened?

Some Soc got shivved, now Curtis and Cade are gone, Tim says and again asks you, where were you last night?

Cruising ‘round the Dingo with Jimmy, you tell him because it’s true enough even if you aren’t wont to tell him the truth about lighting up. Doesn’t matter if it’s what he sells or that the _pastillitas_ that pass through his hands get the bills paid real regularly no matter your mother’s claims. He catches you in his stash he’ll give you a licking no matter that you’re nearly as tall as him already and missing another few inches not that these facts can stop him from putting the fear of God in you all by himself.

Angel at home? He’s the only one to ever call her that though it doesn’t seem he believes it. He’s softest with her and sometimes with you though you like to pretend differently now that you’re trying to turn into a man that can’t be called his miniature.

Was getting into it with ma.

Tim snorts and shakes his head and reminds you of a mule in that moment. Ornery and stubborn as any other Shepard be it by blood or by marriage. ‘Course she was. Don’t wander too much, Cacho, don’t think them Socs’re gonna be too happy ‘bout this and I ain’t fixing to scrape you out the gutter this weekend, and you say okay and goodbye and then you’re circling the park again wondering if it’s true the track star did it or if no one knows the real story or if the truth hides somewhere else in this city.

You go for a burger from Dairy Queen and it turns to ash in your mouth when you catch sight of a car of Socs pulling up next to you. There’s only two of them and just one climbs out, the driver a kid looking barely older than you, ash blonde with a scowl on his face that ain’t half of what he thinks it is if the spark in his eye is anything to go by. He says, Hey, grease, and you rev the engine and grin a little at how it makes him jump.

Lunch break, ese, you say and take another bite just to be spiteful no matter the taste and tell him, Heard your friend bled out ‘cross the street from my buddy’s place, I hear he might’a did the honors, and he reaches out to grab at the passenger side door. You can probably take the two of them scrawny looking as they seem but you think of Tim and you think of the blood and you think of your friend disappearing his face as young-looking as yours. You tell them, Get ready to rumble, boys, and don’t wait for the guy to let go of your car before gunning it and you hope they catch your grin when they yell.

You go home to sleep but Angie’s in the kitchen banging pots and pans in the sink while the radio plays rancheras she pretends to hate and you stop in the doorway to stare at her.

What the fuck do you want, she snaps and there’s a wet patch all down her shirt and soap up to her elbows and her eyeliner smudged like she’s been crying.

What’d ma do to you.

Like you care, she says and you don’t take the bitterness in her voice personally because she’s always a little dramatic after your mother loses it with her, you ran outta here like a bat outta hell, like she wasn’t trying to sacrifice you in the first place.

She hit you?

I’m fine, which means she probably smacked her a little like she tends to do when sober and tired of any or all of her children. Those days aren’t very common but while you and Tim tend to disappear when they come around Angela is the youngest and the one most prone to fight back. It means she gets caught in your mother’s web nearly every time not that it ever stops her from trying all over again. What’re you doing home?

Shit’s a li’l too messy for me today, you say and it might be the only time you’ve ever meant it, ran into Tim ‘round Centennial.

What you out there for?

Cruising, you say and come into the kitchen and dig through the fridge for something to eat. You settle at the table with leftovers which you eat cold from their container and Angela turns back to the sink like she’s ignoring you even if you know she isn’t, Guess some Soc got shanked last night.

She turns back to you and says, Get outta here, her eyes wide and blue and curious like looking into a child’s, as if any of you ever had the chance to be real children no matter how hard Tim tried.

Curtis is on the run, you say and this part of the news feels ugly to share, like you’re passing along news that ain’t yours and that you can’t prove to boot so you follow it up with, Tim said so.

Angela turns to look at you then and her eyes don’t look so innocent anymore and you remember that she’s long thought the youngest of the brothers was handsome even if you’ve lost a girl or two to his older brother. What d’you mean?

‘S all I know, Tim said it was Ponyboy and to lie low in the meantime.

The fuzz got to him?

Him and that indio they run around with, Johnny Cade, they’re missing.

Don’t be ignorant, Curly, I’m pretty sure he’s only half, Angela says but she sits down across from you and steals your leftovers and chews thoughtfully. They’ll give them the chair for that, she says and it’s something like wonder in her voice or maybe just disbelief that fourteen-year-old Ponyboy would be the one to end up in a murder wrap and not Tim or even Dallas who buddies around with them as often as he does Soda Curtis. Her eyes fill up with tears and you wonder how serious she’s taking this or if she’s just in one of her moods which are just another way she’s exactly like your mother and completely unaware of it. Poor Ponyboy.

He ain’t gonna write you any letters if they catch him, you say as if the thought doesn’t make you wanna puke and she just scowls at you and shoves another spoonful of cold fideos into her mouth.

When she swallows she says, You’re an asshole, Curly, and then flounces back upstairs to her room while you finish your soup. Afterwards you wind up in your room again where you fall into a long and dreamless sleep that almost lets you forget the morning’s news and when you wake up you’re surprised that everything is true.

You’re only awake because Angela’s standing in your doorway flipping the lights on and then off and then back again and she says, Curly are you awake.

What the hell do you want, you say except it comes out all in one word and finally she stops messing with the light switch and instead leaves it on.

Go buy me some smokes, will you?

You kidding me?

Ma won’t let me leave the house, and the way she says it makes her look even younger than nearly-fourteen, her birthday coming up soon and already starting to run as wild as you must’ve been at that age, ‘course you were prone to more criminality than the flirtations she gets up to and which drive Tim up the wall.

So tell her to go.

Carlos. She says it in Spanish. Get me some Kools, you can keep the change. Chances are she’s only holding two bills but you swing your legs over the side of the bed and rub your face with your hands before looking at her.

What’s there to eat?

I’ll heat up some beans for you, Angie says, and pull some tortillas from the freezer. I made rice too.

Fine.

Two blocks down and on the opposite side of the intersection there’s a liquor store that don’t like the Shepards much but that’s far closer than any other place for cigarettes or liquor or whatever it is your mother sends you out for sometimes when she’s too drunk or hungover to replenish her stash. You think about maybe buying yourself a candy bar with the change and wander aimlessly for a while just to spook the cashier and then finally when you’re bored you go up to him and ask for cigarettes.

You don’t think you’ve met this man but he’s watching you like you have and he ain’t happy about it. His skin is craggy like the quarry down on the Southside which you may have drunkenly explored a time or two earlier in the summer and once memorably busted your head open in only to arrive home and find it blissfully empty for once. He says, You a Shepard? and ain’t nothing friendly about it.

Who’s asking, you say and try to keep your voice carefully neutral the way Tim’s always is and maybe put your hand in your pocket where you can curl your fingers around your blade. The man tracks the movement and when he looks up he’s scowling and you can’t help but scowl right back.

That brother o’ yours been terrorizing this neighborhood for years, the man says and you know he’s full of shit no matter how scary other folks might find Tim. He ain’t ever been one for needless violence and that includes harassing old folks which is a habit that only unruly boys with fire in their lungs tend to go for, boys like Dallas and maybe even you but not your brother not this lifetime or next.

I just want the smokes, you say and maybe your voice is a little too loud and maybe your grip is too tight on your blade but you can’t help yourself.

Watch your tone, boy, the man says and he’s old like maybe your grandfather is your grandfather who is down in Guadalajara still and who gets money sent once a month money that comes from Tim’s dirty hands and sometimes yours, too. I ain’t gotta sell you Spics shit.

What the fuck did you just say to me, you say and maybe you lean over the counter a little and maybe your hand slips from your pocket still clutching at your blade. You keep it low over your hip, never lifting it because you remember what Tim said when he gave it to you a weapon and a gift all in one. Don’t be stupid, he told you, but you ain’t much for being called names no matter if it’s coming from this geezer or a teacher or some lanky Soc from the Eastside. You got no interest in defending your mother or her country but you’ll be damned if it hangs around your neck when you got a thousand other things hoping to drown you.

The two of you stare at each other for what has to be only a few seconds but that in your rage simmers hot for what feels much longer and then you slip up and when the bell over the door rings you look away from the man for too long. Before you know it your ears are ringing and all you can see is white for a long indefinite moment and when you come to you’re splayed on your belly.

He was tryna rob me, officer, someone says, the last thing you remember being some cop in a uniform walking into the liquor store and your knife still in your grip and you groan at the realization. Your fingers are curled but they ain’t holding onto anything and the tiled floor is dirty and cool against your face and when you finally open your eyes you have to shut them at the sting of something hot and liquid dripping into them.

You say, No, and struggle feebly when you feel someone pulling at your wrists but it doesn’t matter because soon there’s the cold press of metal against your skin while whoever’s arresting you leans his full weight onto the knee that’s digging into your spine and lungs and shoulder blades. You blink and look down and see you’re bleeding from whatever the hell that cashier hit you with and you feel angry again. I didn’t do shit—

Shut the fuck up, the cop says with a voice so bored-sounding you could pretend he’s reciting Civil War facts on a Thursday afternoon like your teacher did this week. It could be Mr. Johnson’s sixth period history class if only you couldn’t hear the threat beneath his words and you go very very still when he speaks next, still belly down on the floor unable to move and your breath hitching like you just got shot, ’fore I kick your fucking teeth in, boy.

You don’t cry but you want to when he hauls you up by the elbows with no care for how your weight falls or how you can’t get your legs under you or how there’s still blood oozing from the cut you can feel throbbing along your hairline. The cashier’s got a shotgun in his hand and you feel cold fear for a split-second and then fury once more when he says, These goddamn wetbacks got no respect ‘round these parts, and soon you’re being dragged into the back of a squad car trying not to shake out of what your mother would call coraje.

The cop says, You look mighty young to be robbing liquor stores, huh, and you say nothing not even when his partner says, Another night another bean-eater, before spitting out the window and you think of Angela at home waiting for her cigarettes with a plate ready for you and you wonder what’ll happen if they catch Ponyboy and then you lean your head against the window and just try to breathe.


End file.
